ViewSonic PLED-W200 portable projector review

Wired rating

Wired

Compact, bright, SD card slot

Tired

A little noisy

Price

£399

If you're the sort who's likely to feel the need to
give business presentations from time to time, a tablet or laptop
isn't always going to cut it in the boardroom. But a portable
projector that's small enough to fit in a briefcase, but offers a
big enough display to give some oomph to presentations, might just
do the job.

The ViewSonic
PLED-W200 isn't the most stylish projector you'll see, but its
two-tone black and grey livery with a neat line of buttons on top
and grille effect round the sides will find a place anywhere. It
measures 130x126 x32mm -- small enough, just about, to fit in the
palm of your hand, and there's a single screw foot on the bottom to
allow you to adjust the projection angle. It comes with a neat
little zip-up case too, for easy portability.

Inside are dual integrated 2W speakers, and this
projector can display Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and other
multimedia files without the need for a computer. Load your
presentation, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF docs,
videos and pics onto an SD card, and you can put on the show with
just the W200. You'll even get sound, thanks to the dual 2W
speakers inside. Navigation is a wee bit clunky using the buttons
on top of the projector, but the slimline remote control makes it
all a bit more intuitive and easier.

Set-up took no more than plugging the W200 into a
laptop -- within a few seconds it had uploaded the drivers and was
displaying the desktop on a nearby wall.

From a couple of metres away you can get a sharp
picture about two metres across. The interface is intuitive,
icon-based and colourful, with options for changing brightness,
contrast and other elements. Once you have them set up the way you
like, you can set them as profiles too.

Though it's clearly intended to display PowerPoint
presentations and the like in a business context, the W200's
relatively bright 200 lumens rating means it can do a reasonable
job of projecting movies too. Contrast looked quite impressive,
especially when handling darker scenes -- they didn't all fade to
black by any means and pixellation was on the right side of
acceptable, certainly for a portable projector. Colours are a
little washed out, but not disastrously so, and it can handle HD
resolutions up to 1080p.

It's not the quietest projector you'll come across
though, and the fan kicks out quite a bit of noise, drawing in air
from four vents on sides and bottom.

Conclusion
The ViewSonic PLED-W200 is a genuinely useful and versatile
projector -- small enough to fit into a briefcase for work
presentations, or into a suitcase if you want to watch films on
holiday. It's bright, contrast is good and though it's a little
noisy, it's a good performer for work or fun.